


hands

by anneblythes



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: Canon Era, Crushes, F/M, Shirbert, and feeling guilty about them, and how weird it is, sexual awakening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-11 23:16:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10476753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneblythes/pseuds/anneblythes
Summary: Anne is ashamed of certain new feelings.





	

It first happened about a week into her stay at Green Gables, and she thought they might send her away.

After all, Marilla talked to God, Who would certainly tell all. Anne prayed now, too, but God was sure to favour one of His lifelong servants over a scrappy thing who’d never read the Bible, and had dreams she didn’t understand.

This first dream was a strange one indeed. She was still half awake when it began, and so it carried forward as dreams do, but throughout it all, she felt a terrible sense of shame and fear. Her free, imaginative side enjoyed what was happening, these strange and lovely things her mind was coming up with- why had they so disgusted her before? She could stay in this fantasy forever. 

Another side of her, the more grounded one, kept her from that. They were reprehensible, these new feelings in her body, these new thoughts in her head. No one had ever bothered to tell her what they meant, but she could piece an idea together from things overheard. What she dreamt of was embarrassing, especially for a young lady. Nice girls didn’t think about it- and when they had to, when their husbands wanted to, they lay back and bore it. They didn’t look, or touch, or experience. Real life was not like her dream.

But of course, real life was not the life Anne lived. She often found herself thinking of men and women together, in every time and place, across history and planets and universes. She developed a taste for the kings and princes in her schoolbooks, even for the pretty girls in her reader’s bright pictures- though she would never tell anyone that. Soon, she would discover that nothing in her face or body betrayed what she thought; in fact, she might seem to be deeply focused on something, perhaps her schoolwork, but actually dreaming her dreams over and over.

*  
One night, much later, the dream grew a face, a young man’s face. He floated out of her mind and into the desk a row back, and he smiled, and she hated him.

She especially hated what he looked like at White Sands that one day in July, when he jumped in the water with his clothes on and completely soaked his shirt, making visible all of what had never quite been real before. That night her hands were his hands, and they didn’t hesitate, and they had no shame. Not until after the fact, anyway. When she had got what she desired, she washed her hands, wondering why she felt she needed to, and opened her Bible. 

In the years since she’d arrived at Green Gables, she’d came to know the Bible like a priest did. She would find what she was looking for in an epistle, something where Paul railed against the sins of a church far away. 

She turned to Romans. It was one of the first books of the Bible she’d ever read: Marilla had wanted her to know about salvation. There’s a part in it about not making provisions for the sins of the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof. She knew exactly where to find that line. 

Anne read it, then quietly closed the book. She looked down at her hands, her new worst enemies. How could she turn the pages of the Bible with them, knowing full well what they’d just done? She was disgusting. God had seen her do it, and He was probably furious. In the morning, she’d get a sign- maybe she’d be in school, looking at him out of the corner of her eye, and her slate would fly off her desk. Or maybe she’d just be struck dead when she next thought about him. That was lust, wasn’t it? And lust was punished.

She thought about him. She thought about his hands on that day they picked flowers in the field, how they lingered on top of hers when he gave her that bouquet of alfalfa. She pretended she could still feel them. They had been so warm, and so big. Then she thought about him in class, how he chewed on his pen and whispered jokes to her whenever he felt like it, sometimes in the middle of tests. The jokes were horrible, but something about those whispers, and how close he leaned in to say them, made the pit of her stomach feel warm. 

She kept thinking about him until she fell asleep, and God did not strike her down.

*

“Gilbert, do you know something?” Anne asked. 

“What is it, Anne-girl?”

“Before we were married, I thought it was a sin to love you. I was afraid that if I even thought about you, God would punish me.”

“What did you think He’d do? Send down a lightning bolt, like an old pagan story?”

“I never quite developed my idea, truthfully. But Gilbert- if it is a sin to love, I think the world believes in the wrong sort of Lord.”

“He wouldn’t be the one I know,” Gilbert replied, and took her hand.


End file.
